Aaron Starr
“When I was in third grade in Troy Public Schools, my teacher invited us to join her in a weekly, afterschool Bible study she was to lead. I came home and shared with my parents my desire to join all my friends in this club. The next day we heard from our teacher that afterschool Bible study was canceled.
I later came to learn that, angered upon hearing my announcement, my mother paid a successful visit to the school principal. In America, she explained, there is a separation between church and state.
There is a good chance that if my third-grade incident occurred in today’s America, the principal would reject my mother’s concerns about her Jewish son feeling excluded from the overtly Christian Bible study group. After all, according to recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, what we as Jews perceive as an American value of separation between church and state amounts for our more conservative neighbors to an attack on their freedom of religion.”
Read the full op-ed in the Detroit Jewish News
